From sweet and smooth classics, to new names, to old names with new music...the focus here, is to shine a little light on some damn fine music.

I'll find it. You can listen, review, or tell me I wouldn't know good music if it kicked me in the ass. I personally don't give a shit.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Matthew Shepard: Too Young to Die

October 12, 1998.

A date which marked the death of a young man, who was killed for no other reason than he was different from the men who killed him. Matthew Shepard was gay, and it cost him his life.

Sometime after midnight on October 7th, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson drove Matthew Shepard to a remote area of Laramie, Wyoming. He was beaten so severely, his brainstem was affected. Matthew was tied to a fence and left to die. Eighteen hours later, his comatose body was discovered by a bicyclist, who at first thought his limp body was a scarecrow. All because he was gay.

Matthew died a few days later, never regaining consciousness. His death brought outrage and deservedly so.

Legislation was introduced to create a hate crime bill which would be inclusive of bias attacks concerning sexual orientation. After several failures, the Matthew Shepard Act was signed into law by President Obama on October 28, 2009.

When thinking about a song for today, I remembered one which dealt with another type of prejudice. Written by a teenager in 1965, "Society's Child" dealt with interracial romance. While today, a relationship between different races barely causes the blink of an eye, in the 60's it was unacceptable, even illegal in some places, and was spoken of in hushed tones.

Though the struggle between being accepted as gay is not the same as loving someone with a different skin color, the old mores and narrow-mindedness come clearly into the picture. Prejudice is prejudice.

On the anniversary of his death, let's shine some light on the issue of fear and hate of other human beings for no other reason than they are different.

4 comments:

That is a beautiful song. Matthew's a martyr, but the good kind. The kind that changes things. we are so far behind where we need to be on same sex marriage and equal rights for pepope, in terms of sexuality. But at least we're better than we were when Matthew died.

Thanks Lance. We are moving in the right direction, it just takes too long. In my lifetime I remember seeing "Whites Only" motels, restaurants, etc. as we traveled through the south. As a kid I knew it was wrong, you would think by now, we would all know better, with all types of discrimination.